Body, Mind and Sport

I decided to read the book that inspired some of the linked articles that I wrote about recently, John Douillard's Body, Mind, and Sport.

In general, I was actually a little disappointed with the book, but I can't exactly put my finger on why. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe it was my Western bias. Essentially, the main point of the book is that you should live and train in a way that is in accordance with Nature to maintain optimal health and fitness (which is not necessarily the same as performance). It's not that I really disagree with that idea, but some of the specifics are a little jarring.

There are some aspects of the book that I really liked. A key concept is that to achieve optimal athletic performance, you need to have inner calm. He describes it as "the eye of the hurricane". The more dynamic the activity is externally, the more internally calm you need to be. I get this, and I understand that this is part of my problem when it comes to riding my bike. I ride so much better when I can just switch off my brain and let my body do the work.

The training method used to achieve this state is interesting, and, again, a little jarring to Western sensibilities, but it does sort of make sense. The idea is to put yourself in a calm mental state during your warmup, and progress with your activity in such a way that you can maintain this state. One of the catches is, at least initially, to maintain this state, you will probably have to reduce your intensity... a lot.

The last thing that I appreciated was that Douillard didn't take the approach that his way was the only way. For each point, he mostly took the approach of, "This is what I think the best way is, but try it out. If it works for you, great. If not, or if you don't like it, do something else."

I'm still not sure what the endgame here is for me. Even though my performance while nasal breathing has improved a lot over the last few weeks, it's hard for me to imagine actually racing like that.